Our First Time in an RV!
August 16 and 17, 2015
Best friends come in all shapes and sizes. My best friend is short and tiny but as feisty as a full-bloodied Italian. As a matter of fact, she is a full-blooded Italian and we worked together in a school library for 10 years. We called ourselves partners in crime, cybrary chicks and goddesses. We laughed, cried, vented and plotted together to get through each day and all sorts of life situations. This is just one example of our serendipitous relationship.
Eleven days after I retired, my husband and I bought our retirement home, a 35 foot motorhome and seriously began putting our house on the market.
Meanwhile, my BFF discovered a Class A motorhome parked in her Condo parking lot. Eventually she met the couple who owned it and, small world, she discovered that they had just purchased it from the same dealership from which we purchased ours. The more she talked with them about our new RV and full-time lifestyle, the more they wanted to share with us all that they had learned about RV camping. So… in the middle of August George graciously offered to take us to Brookville, Indiana for our trial run!
Jeff sets out, before we meet George, to start the refrigerator at Miamitown Storage where our RV is parked. He returns worried, thinking the refrigerator is not connected. Unlike most RVs, our refrigerator is not run on propane. It is a house-like stainless steel refrigerator that only runs on electricity. It is Sunday and no RV places are open to troubleshoot! Of course! We borrow a cooler from my BFF and purchase ice. By the time we arrive at our campsite in Brookville, however, we find out the refrigerator is working properly. It runs off the battery inverter when we travel until we can plug into electricity. Now we know!
Meanwhile, as we pull away from Miamitown Storage on our way to Brookville we witness a loud crash! The cabinet over the sink flies open and our bungee corded magna cookware bounces out in pieces, handles, and lids and takes 2 chunks out of the floor slide under our table. So much for securing the cabinet contents properly.
The dogs don’t know what is happening as we travel to the campground in Indiana. Casey settles down but Murph wants to explore my lap, Jeff’s lap, under my feet, under Jeff’s feet and I have to be persistent in insisting that he stay with Casey BETWEEN the driver and passenger seats.
After arriving at the campsite George helps hook up our motorhome and then Jeff assists him with his vehicle.
I do a cabinet check to make sure all of the inside storage units are safe to open. That’s when some books spew out from over the sofa and land right on top of Casey! He is not a happy camper!
Using the toilet is my next accomplishment. I discover I can pee successfully but I opt to poop at the public bathrooms, that is, until Jeff tells me how deplorable they are. So, yes, I finally learn to use the commode for all my bathroom needs.
George you are so generous, kind, patient, and helpful!!!! Thank you, George! Someday we hope to pass on this learning experience to another newbie RV owner.
This is my first picture from the passenger seat of the RV just to give you a little bit of the feeling of the high open view. Oh, and the RV in the distance is George’s Winnebago. We’re not ready to put the petal to the metal yet!
I am glad we took the RV out for its maiden voyage before we were homeless. We discovered we needed to return to Colerain RV to troubleshoot some problems and tweak others. The shades over the sofa needed to be tightened to allow us to raise them up. The refrigerator inverter circuit needed to be reset. Since our fridge runs on electricity we have to use the inverter when we are on the road so that the appliance can run off the batteries. We had the rear back-up camera adjusted so that we could see what was behind us instead of just viewing the pavement under the rear wheels.
wandering gypsy Laurel 